§ Statement of Purpose

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787. Knowing and preserving those understandings, what might be called the unwritten constitution of our nation, is vital to preserving constitutional government. Without them, the bare words of the Constitution are just a Rorschach ink-blot that politicians, educators, and judges can interpret to mean anything they wish.

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division, Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798.

The Constitution created a government that people expected to defend them against foreign aggression and to protect the natural law rights of individuals to life, political liberty, and free exercise of private property rights. Today, instead of protecting individual rights against mob will, we have a Federal government that follows the mob and presumes the power to force people to conform to the schemes of academic state-planners.

Whatever you may think about the propriety of large bonuses paid to AIG employees, whether you like it or not, the bonuses were paid in accordance with legal contracts executed before AIG received bailout money. Those individuals had a legal right to the money. If the company or the Federal government wished to abrogate the contracts, the spirit infusing the Bill of Rights required them to adjudicate the matter in the courts of law. Among other things, the 14th Amendment declares “...No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Those are also limitations upon the Federal government, which Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, in the Federalist papers, argued were implicit in the Constitution.

As the Anti-Federalists vigorously asserted in the debate over ratification of the Constitution from 1787 to 1789, the citizens of the United States did not fight a war against the arbitrary tyranny of George III and Parliament only to replace them with a powerful Federal government, which they feared could ride roughshod over the people’s individual rights.

In the early decades of Constitutional government, as a bulwark against collectivization of power at the Federal level, the states retained and exercised the largest share of powers affecting citizens in their everyday conduct. In the 20th century, particularly after 1932, the states increasingly were relegated to minor roles as the Federal government usurped more and more tax revenues. The number of Federal regulatory agencies was expanded exponentially and hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations were added. Individuals and businesses found themselves ensnared in a web of red tape.

For a wide-ranging indictment of the mob-spirit tyranny displayed by our current Congress, with the tacit support of the President, read George F. Will’s column in the Washington Post, The Toxic Assets We Elected.